North Dakota Democrats Caught Lying About Rick Berg
And what’s actually pretty funny about this situation is that the Democrat responsible for the lying, state party chairman Mark Schneider, is an injury lawyer who was at one time pulling down at least half a million a year representing injured workers.
He should have known better, and probably did, but went ahead and tried to smear Berg anyway counting on our not-exactly-forceful state media to let the matter go. But, for once, a North Dakota reporter didn’t just reprint the press release.
North Dakota’s Democratic state party leader recently went after Republican U.S. House candidate Rick Berg for leading the push to defeat a 2003 state bill that he said would have helped a Gilby, N.D., bank teller receive mental injury compensation after an armed robbery.
But the text of state House Bill 1317, which was defeated 48-46, shows this legislation actually wouldn’t have helped the employee — a fact that state Mark Schneider, chairman of the Democratic-NPL Party, agreed with today, just four days after issuing a news release that seemed to say otherwise.
At issue is a Workforce Safety & Insurance letter in May that denied a claim by Edith Johnson, 56, who was seeking compensation for less than $1,000 of medical costs stemming from a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.
Johnson was handcuffed and held at gunpoint during a May 26, 2009, robbery of more than $50,000 from Gilby’s Bremer Bank.
“As majority leader, Rick Berg failed Edith Johnson,” Schneider wrote in a Friday news release. “It’s because of his actions that she is being denied coverage for a clearly legitimate claim. Now it’s his responsibility to fix it.”
Text of HB 1317 shows it was meant to add a new section to the North Dakota Century Code to allow for compensation of mental injuries. But it wouldn’t have applied to the case of a bank teller such as Johnson.
By the way, it looks like Earl Pomeroy is push polling again. I had posted about reports of this sort of push polling early on in the campaign, and a few days ago commenters here on the blog were reporting push polling again. It looks like it’s happening all over the state:
…multiple North Dakota residents reported to Berg’s campaign that they had received calls from a biased pollster regarding the state’s House race.
Some residents said the pollster, who told one voter he was based in El Paso, started off with a couple of positive questions about Democratic-NPL incumbent Rep. Earl Pomeroy before moving on to a dozen “push-style attack questions” about Berg.
“What it tells me is that they’re going to dust off the old Washington-style attack campaign playbook and distract them from the fact that Earl is voting with Nancy Pelosi 97 percent of the time,” Nelson said. “Let’s fire off a press release blaming Rick Berg for something.”
The Democrats have lost Dorgan. They’re apparently going all-in to protect Pomeroy, and no tactic is too slimy.
Tags: Earl Pomeroy, election 2010, Mark Schneider, North Dakota News, push polling, Rick Berg
